Every moving light

This original piece of music seeks to extend theological aesthetics’ focus on literature and representational arts to the artform of “musicking”. The specific research question underlying this piece is about the contribution of beauty to human life and Christian faith. Drawing on Balthasar’s thesis of the intrinsic connection between the crucified Christ and a Scriptural understanding of Glory, the song performs the reversed understanding of beauty found in Christian self-giving. The underlying research position is that music-making is an essential form of human meaning-making beyond or even underlying the duality of verbal communication.

Every Moving Light performs this dimension of Balthasar’s work through a medium he was an expert in but left outside the space of theology proper, wary of allowing such powerful art-form to distract from the centrality of Christ. Such suspicion needs to be overcome by moving from writing theologically about music to theologising through music. This innovative form of doing theology allows music’s specific semiotic patterning of experience and understanding to express and exteriorise aspects of conversion and Christian faith not accessed solely through theoretical reasoning.

This song was produced by Multi-Platinum Award Winning Producer Adrian Hannan at The Song Store, VIC; launched at The Cave Inn, Brisbane, while livestreamed to an international audience from across Australia, Asia, Europe, the USA, and Latin America; and released by Willow Publishing Party Ltd. In 2022, it was published by Bloomsbury, in connection to a book-chapter on this theme. The growing impact of the song is therefore extending beyond the theological community to end-users in the Church and broader society.

'Every Moving Light' is also referred to as part of the chapter "Is beauty superfluous to human life and Christian faith?" in Maeve Heaney's book 'Suspended God: Music and a Theology of Doubt' (2022).

File size over 30 MB.